| Good morning. The Department of Justice is considering a historic breakup of Google in its monopoly case. Hurricane Milton is approaching Florida, threatening lives and businesses. And Boeing has withdrawn its contract offer as talks with its biggest union break down. Here's what's moving markets — Morwenna Coniam. Five Things will publish its last edition this Friday, Oct. 11. To keep you up to speed, you will automatically begin receiving the new, more expansive subscriber-only Markets Daily newsletter starting Oct. 14. Not a Bloomberg.com subscriber yet? You'll get a complimentary trial of Markets Daily. Joe Weisenthal will continue writing regularly over on the new daily Odd Lots newsletter. US futures slipped following a report that the US Justice Department is considering a breakup of Alphabet's Google search engine, signaling an antitrust crackdown on Big Tech. Europe's benchmark was little changed after Chinese stocks extended yesterday's selloff amid concerns about the economy. The 10-year Treasury yield hovered above the key 4% level after diminished expectations for interest-rate cuts triggered a run of selling in previous days. The US Justice Department is considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell off parts of its business as it seeks to prevent the tech giant from using products including search, Chrome and Android and emerging features such as AI, to its advantage. Google could also be ordered to provide access to the underlying data it uses to build its search results and artificial intelligence products. The effort is the most significant move to rein in a major tech company over illegal monopolization since Washington unsuccessfully sought to break up Microsoft two decades ago. Hurricane Milton is churning toward Florida's west coast as a dangerous Category 5 storm, with flooding and high winds expected to inflict widespread damage and put lives at risk. The National Hurricane Center is calling for as much as a 15-foot storm surge into Tampa Bay, which would lead to widespread flooding in the city and surrounding area. The storm's economic toll could be severe, with damage to Florida's citrus crops and many businesses, including the state's iconic theme parks — which announced they would close until the hurricane had passed. Negotiations to end an almost monthlong strike at Boeing collapsed and S&P Global Ratings warned it may cut the planemaker's credit grade to junk as the work stoppage shows no sign of ending. Boeing withdrew its contract offer to hike wages 30% and boost retirement benefits, saying talks with its largest union don't make sense now. The impasse leaves Boeing with no clear path forward to overcome the debilitating strike, which has shut down production at its key commercial manufacturing base on the US west coast. Minutes from the Federal Reserve's September's meeting released today will show the extent of consensus around the rate cut decision and may also provide a glimpse at the downside risks policymakers thought warranted the outsized move. Meanwhile, the latest speeches from Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson and Atlanta Fed chief Raphael Bostic pointed to a measured approach. Lorie Logan, Bostic, Austan Goolsbee and Mary Daly are all scheduled to speak today. This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours. Today we get the minutes from the recent FOMC meeting. And since this was the start of the rate cut cycle, and since they went 50 basis points, I would imagine there will be a fair amount of interest in what the minutes have to say.
Of course, the big news this week is going to come tomorrow (Thursday) when we get the September CPI report. For a while there, it seemed like we could just pay attention to the labor data. But with that shockingly strong September jobs report putting a few doubts into the continuation of the cycle, we should probably keep paying attention to what's going on on the inflation side.
In the meantime... things still look strong. Yesterday we got the Atlanta Fed's latest GDP Nowcast for Q3, and it's still tracking growth over 3%. It all just adds to the weirdness of this whole cycle, which I would summarize like this: On the one hand, it seems odd to be cutting at all, with growth as robust as it is, and unemployment as low as it is. On the other hand, the Fed is clearly trying to do something ahistorical, which is start the cutting cycle ahead of the curve, and not wait until a downturn is obvious before going into easing mode. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on X @TheStalwart | 
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